X Drives with Encryption

[zey]

Yes I know there's mostly like dozens of thread on this topic. However I'm looking for fresh opinions and I also have a ten month old daughter (Skylar) who does not give me much geekin' time.

Here's my current setup.
10x3TB in two vdevs of five drives
16GB ECC, more memory will be ordered soon to 32GB

I've already moved the data and can go ahead and reconfigure the drives. I want to use encryption and also wanted to know the down side to encrypting. In your opinion what would be the best configuration?

 

[Ericloewe]

also wanted to know the down side to encrypting

If you screw it up, you'll be intimately familiar with the following philosophical question:
"If this data is encrypted, but the key no longer exists, does the data still exist?"

It's also full-disk encryption, which is barely useful outside of very specific scenarios. ZFS will be getting native encryption (with its own set of limitations) some time soon (tm).

 

[zey]

Sounds like the idea for me to go with encryption may be premature. How about my current configuration of my 10 drives?

 

[Ericloewe]

Sounds like the idea for me to go with encryption may be premature. How about my current configuration of my 10 drives?

It's unusual. The standard approach would be a single 10-drive RAIDZ2 vdev.

 

[zey]

I figured that. What happen was I started with five drives and then got an other five. So I had to create an other vdev to extend the volume.

 

[fta]

I'd do 5 mirrors with encryption. It's flexible and will handle anything you throw at it. And your data is safe if it gets stolen or you need to replace a drive.

 

[zey]

I'd do 5 mirrors with encryption. It's flexible and will handle anything you throw at it. And your data is safe if it gets stolen or you need to replace a drive.

fta,

Can you elaborate or point me in the direction on how to setup 5 mirrors with encryption? I believe I understand how to configure this suggested setup. However I'll be losing a lot of space one vdev of all 10 drives in a raidz2 I get 20TB with your suggested setup I get 13TB.

Thanks

 

[zey]

Would anyone else like to make a suggest before I decide on the standard approach verses the 5 mirrors with encryption?

 

[Mr_N]

It really depends what your needing from the Pool...

Do you have any more room for HDD's, what is your current and future storage requirements?

Do you have a good reason for using encryption?

 

[zey]

It really depends what your needing from the Pool...

Do you have any more room for HDD's, what is your current and future storage requirements?

Do you have a good reason for using encryption?

Mr_N,

Thank you for your reply. My server has 12 bays with 10 drives installed. I do not plan on adding any more hard drives. If I do, the only drive I would consider is dual SSDs for cache. However I do not feel I would benefit from it. My reasoning for encryption is due to the server being housed in my job's server room. There is only a wooden door with an easy to unlock door. All you need is one of those free rewards card and you're in. The server itself does not have a locked drive bay either. I'll have all of my personal data on the server and would hate to have it stolen. It's not likely but when is it ever? Granted it won't be financial data but it will be my family photos and personal documents along with my entire media collection which isn't always collected from my owned media ;)

As far as my needs from the storage pool. There isn't much, the main purpose for the server at the moment is storage. I will be adding maybe five jails in the near future. But that would be after I add an other 16 GB to the current 16 GB I have.

I must say this I do want to squeeze out as much space as I can out of my 10x 3 TB hard drives. Which is why I'm finding it hard to decide on whether to go with raidz2 all in one vdev or 5 mirrored and encrypted.

 

[Mr_N]

I'd probably buy 2 more drives and make 2x6 drive raidz2 vdevs, or buy one more drive and make it an 11 drive raidz3 single vdev :)
The encryption side of things is fairly straight forward currently as long as you keep backups of your keys and passphrases as well as strictly following the manual instructions when doing things like replacing faulty drives :)

 

[zey]

I do like the idea of buying two more drives and setting up pretty much what I already had with 2x5 drive in a raidz2. However that's $220 but I like the idea of maxing out the drive bay so I won't be making any chances to the server for at least two years.

RAID-Z2
Raw Storage: 36.0 TB / 36000.0 GB
Usable Storage: 27.3 TB / 27939.7 GB

Of course the $220 is making me hesitate..

 

[Mr_N]

I'm guessing you meant 2x6 drive z2 :)

 

[zey]

Yes I know there's mostly like dozens of thread on this topic. However I'm looking for fresh opinions and I also have a ten month old daughter (Skylar) who does not give me much geekin' time.

Here's my current setup.
10x3TB in two vdevs of five drives
16GB ECC, more memory will be ordered soon to 32GB

I've already moved the data and can go ahead and reconfigure the drives. I want to use encryption and also wanted to know the down side to encrypting. In your opinion what would be the best configuration?

Nope I meant 2x5. Before I started this thread I already had 2x5 raidz2. Because I had started off with five drives in raidz2 and added five more so I had to extend the volume. But I couldn't do encryption at the time because I didn't have a way to offload my data so that I can start encryption. Now I do so before I start my new storage pool I wanted to see all my options and see what the community has to suggest.

 

[Mr_N]

I meant what you're going to do if you buy those 2 more drives as you said...